Computer Museum Blues
---------------------

Halt the system clock
Shutdown clean
Blanket your Windows
with a bright blue screen
Silence the modem
and the telegraph
Evict the public
Lay off the staff

Let hard drives spin down
or let their heads crash
Drag all the documents
into the trash
De-blinken the lights
on the mainframes
Erase the high scores
of all the games

You were my files, my directories,
my six forty K
My helpful DOS prompts:
C>, B>, and A>
My strings, my ints, my floats
and my longs
I thought your computers would run forever
I was wrong

The Xerox Stars are not wanted now
Nor the Apple I
Sell the PDP 10
Deaccession the Suns
Haul them away
in an auction-house van
There is no road ahead
for the idea man


-- with apologies to W.H. Auden
   (and pretty much everyone else)

Fri Jul  5 11:52:38 PDT 2024